Mandatory Drug Offender Processing Data, 1987: New York (ICPSR 9565)

Principal Investigator(s):
United States Department of Justice. Office of Justice Programs. Bureau of Justice Assistance, and
Criminal Justice Statistics Association

Summary:

The National Consortium for Assessing Drug Control
Initiatives, funded by the Bureau of Justice Assistance and
coordinated by the Criminal Justice Statistics Association, collected
drug offender processing data from the state of New York. The purpose
of the project was to track adult drug offenders from the point of
entry into the criminal justice system (typically by arrest) through
final court disposition, regardless of whether the offender was
released without trial, acquitted, or convicted. These data allow
researchers to examine how the criminal justice system processes drug
offenders, to measure the changing volume of drug offenders moving
through the different segments of the criminal justice system, to
calculate processing time intervals between major decision-making
events, and to assess the changing structure of the drug offender
population. For purposes of this project, a drug offender was defined
as any person who had been charged with a felony drug offense. The
data are structured into six segments pertaining to (1) record
identification, (2) the offender (date of birth, sex, race, and ethnic
origin), (3) arrest information (date of arrest, age at arrest, arrest
charge code), (4) prosecution information (filed offense code and
level, prosecution disposition and date), (5) court disposition
information (disposition offense and level, court disposition, final
disposition date, final pleading, type of trial), and (6) sentencing
information (sentence and sentence date, sentence minimum and
maximum). Also included are elapsed time variables. The unit of
analysis is the felony drug offender.

The National Consortium for Assessing Drug Control
Initiatives, funded by the Bureau of Justice Assistance and
coordinated by the Criminal Justice Statistics Association, collected
drug offender processing data from the state of New York. The purpose
of the project was to track adult drug offenders from the point of
entry into the criminal justice system (typically by arrest) through
final court disposition, regardless of whether the offender was
released without trial, acquitted, or convicted. These data allow
researchers to examine how the criminal justice system processes drug
offenders, to measure the changing volume of drug offenders moving
through the different segments of the criminal justice system, to
calculate processing time intervals between major decision-making
events, and to assess the changing structure of the drug offender
population. For purposes of this project, a drug offender was defined
as any person who had been charged with a felony drug offense. The
data are structured into six segments pertaining to (1) record
identification, (2) the offender (date of birth, sex, race, and ethnic
origin), (3) arrest information (date of arrest, age at arrest, arrest
charge code), (4) prosecution information (filed offense code and
level, prosecution disposition and date), (5) court disposition
information (disposition offense and level, court disposition, final
disposition date, final pleading, type of trial), and (6) sentencing
information (sentence and sentence date, sentence minimum and
maximum). Also included are elapsed time variables. The unit of
analysis is the felony drug offender.

Access Notes

The public-use data files in this collection are available for access by the general public.
Access does not require affiliation with an ICPSR member institution.

Methodology

Data Source:

computerized criminal history data files

Extent of Processing: ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of
disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major
statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to
these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection:

Performed consistency checks.

Standardized missing values.

Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes.

Version(s)

Original ICPSR Release: 1992-03-04

Version History:

1997-08-25 SAS data definition statements are now available
for this collection, and the SPSS data definition statements were
updated.